Item Songs in Bollywood - An Overkill?

A recent post on Facebook that likened UP with an item song (both don’t contribute much but give flair to an otherwise dull bigger picture),

got me thinking about item songs and the utility or futility of it all. Once considered novel, they seem to have become a norm of sorts.

Indian cinema has always been the “shy” cousin of Hollywood and rightly so; we depicted kissing and making out with the help of flowers and darkened the screen whenever a scene was preceded by some heavy breathing. Rape scenes (Bhagwaan ke liye mujhe chor do!) however were not as much of a taboo. Guess that says a lot about us as a society! However, things seem to be changing for the better now.

From the era when calling someone ‘sexy’ was derogatory (which is now a compliment btw), we have come a long way. Remember that iconic Govinda & Karisma song ‘Baby, Baby, Baby mujhe log bolein’? Well it originally had the word ‘sexy’ instead of the much demure ‘baby’. A long way indeed.

Item songs are not new to Indian cinema; Helen has been doing it all along. And they almost always managed to achieve what they intended i.e. pull in the numbers. But back then, they were more like a gourmet meal than a staple diet. These days every other movie is promoted by the help of an item song, the latest imported heroine the song sports and the raunchy/double meaning lyrics that the, otherwise finicky, Censor Board conveniently overlooks. Sometimes the directors go as far as including a scene or a twist in the movie which justifies (or does it?) the inclusion of the sensuous (and sometimes vulgar and garish) woman gyrating to cheap lyrics. And then there are some directors who don’t even bother to put in this effort and just randomly insert the song.

I am certainly not against item songs as they do add a little spice to the overall film & sometimes are pleasurable to watch. But there has to be a reason for their inclusion. A recent movie had Mallika Sherawat dancing to the tunes of Laila. The director of the movie questioned the need of the song but was promptly shut up by the producers as they felt that it is the item song that decides the fate of the movie. Obviously, the story is just another trivial thing.

Today we are inundated with songs related to every other kitchen ingredient (Jalebi, Malai etc.) & every other name used callously (Munni, Shalu, Sheila etc.). Soon when they run out of sexy sounding ingredients, maybe they will move on to the more banal ones like Hing & Jeera as there certainly isn’t any dearth of wannabe starlets waiting out there to mark their “presence” with such a song. And ironically, with filmmakers like Mahesh Bhatt & Ram Gopal Verma around, they succeed too.

Maybe we just need to patiently wait for the time when our filmmakers will FINALLY realise that they had it wrong all along. That it is not the item song, the action sequence or the star cast that makes or breaks a movie. People watch movies to experience an interesting story to escape their humdrum lives. Till that time comes, we’ll have to bear with more Munnis & Sheilas trying to cash in a quick buck while adding nothing to the story.